Freak Scene

What a whirlwind couple of weeks for my ass! So much going on I can hardly see straight. The sad news is that my grandmother passed away last week. She had Alzheimer's and had been quickly deteriorating for the past few years, so her death was no shock, but sad nonetheless. Believe it or not, this is the first death in our whole family. There was an infant cousin of mine that died in '86, but aside from that, I've gone 31 years without having a single adult relative die. So this was a pretty new thing for our family.

Yale's adorable parents

After considerable cogitation on the matter, I decided I would drive up to Montana to pay my respects. Christ almighty was that ever a long haul! I left Friday at about 2pm and got to Missoula at about 4pm the next day. The funeral service was at 2 on Sunday, and I had to leave immediately afterward and head home to be to work on Tuesday. Yesterday I drove all the way from Pocatello to Denver- 600 miles!

Bighorn sheep on Hwy. 93 near Sula, MT

I also took some bitchin' backroads, like Chief Joseph Pass in Montana that goes from Lost Trail to Wisdom and ends up near Dillon (where I was born). Shit, I think I saw maybe six other cars on that entire 100-mile stretch. Very lonely and remote, but quite beautiful. Then I took another backroad from Pocatello across remote southeastern Idaho and ended up near Kemmerer, Wyoming. That was a trippy drive. Then about 300 more miles worth of Interstate 80 across southern Wyoming. Now, as you know, I fancy myself kind of a pseudo-Situationist kind of cat that can appreciate the intrinsic value of almost any place, but I gotta say that I think southern Wyoming might be one of the most god-awful places I've been through. Stopping for gas in Rock Springs, a torrid, windswept, treeless expanse of desolation and despair, I found myself thanking my lucky stars that I didn't have to be there any longer than it took to get gas.

Conversely, I found myself really digging Pocatello. I couldn't remember if I'd ever been there before, but I was struck by what pleasant town it is. It has a nice big campus (Idaho State), lots of mature trees, a real downtown, all the stuff that comprises a decent human habitat. It's cheap too! Shit, I was reading that the median house price is $95,000. Contrast this with $265,000 in the metro Denver area (and well over $300K in Denver proper).

Speaking of which, me and Glenda done bought us a new pad! This was also a very whirlwind operation. We'd been feeling very cramped for the entire time we both lived in our current pad. In fact, 95% of my stuff is in a little storage unit a few miles away. So since we both got raises recently, we figured it was time to upgrade our habitat.

We presently live in a townhouse development, and we observed that there were 8 other people selling their townhouses, and the real estate market is in the terlet here in Denver, so we figured it was gonna take like six months to sell our place. So we put it up for sale, thinking we'd have plenty of time. As it turns out, people were lining up to check our place out, and the first people that looked at it made an offer for the full asking price! Don't ask me why. Part of their offer stated that they need to move in by June 30, so that put us in kind of a crunch to find a new pad. So every day we'd meet our realtor and he'd drive us around to look at places until nightfall. We really wanted to move to an older 'hood in Denver. I really really really dig the pre-WWII neighborhoods in Denver and moreover, there's no fucking way I'm gonna live in one of these latter-day pre-fab cul-de-sac eyesores that have infested Denver's periphery. But alas, all the decent pads in the older 'hoods in Denver are either a) right next to a freeway, b) well beyond our price range or c) in a very unsavory area.

Eventually we found a really cool house in Wheat Ridge. The neighborhood is kind of square, but the house is unbelievable. It's brick outside, so it's sturdy; It was built in '62 and has stood the test of time quite impressively. The inside is a mind-blower, though. The previous residents really went to town on the remodeling, so it's got all new tiles and a granite kitchen counter. It has a nice xeriscaped back yard, well cared for and manageable in size. And a basement! I'm hoping to make one of the rooms in the basement into a rock 'n' roll romper room. I'll finally get to bail my treasured record collection out of the storage unit and I've agreed to let Glenda decorate that room in a Middle Eastern motif with beads and whatnot. Eventually I'm hoping to get a real small-scale recording studio going in there so I can put out more solo albums. It also has a garage, which I'm really excited about. Glenda's had her ride stolen twice, and some asshole recently keyed the hood of my ride, so it'll be a major relief to have our cars docked safely in the garage.

I'm totally stoked to move in, but as someone who lived most of his 20s in shithole party pads, I feel a little weird about the whole thing. I suspect it's gonna take some work to get past feeling like a squarejohn yuppie, but it shouldn't be too terrible a struggle.

And if you're in need of some good belly laffs, dig this crazy jive: http://www.missoulian.com/brides/engagements/030608-kaul-golter.html. Is my head really as misshapen as it appears in that picture?

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With regard to our recent collective kvetching about baby names, my co-worker Wavy Gravy Dave sends the following article on the subject: http://www.9news.com/storyfull-co.asp?id=15268. There's an accompanying table too that shows the rankings of baby names for 2002. You'll notice that the top name for girls is Madison, easily my least favorite among the batch of yuppie baby names. But actually among the rest of the list, there's not too many terrible names. Most of them aren't too bad. But I gotta say, I'm not really too excited about a future filled with people named Elijah, Logan, Sierra, Caleb, Jayden, Chloe, etc.

Interestingly, you'll notice that they have the top baby names broken down by ethnic group. If you scroll down to the African-American names, there's some that I can't quite decide what to think. I kinda dig some of them, like Xavier and Imani. But Malachi? Asia? Diamond? Nevaeh? How the hell do you pronounce Nevaeh? And is Malachi supposed to be pronounced "muh-law'-chee" or "mal'-uh-kigh"?

And does the rise in popularity of naming your kid "heaven" spelled backwards presage a nationwide movement of such nonsense? How soon until some goofball Camaro enthusiast decides to name his daughter Oramac?

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